Healer/SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, the Healer is one of the roles from NetHack that is available to the hero.

Healers can be humans, gnomes, elves, or hobbits, and are always neutral.

Starting equipment

Each Healer starts with the following equipment:

• a +1 scalpel (wielded)
• an uncursed +1 pair of leather gloves
• 10-20 uncursed apples
• a blessed spellbook of healing
• a blessed spellbook of stone to flesh
• 4 non-cursed potions of healing
• 4 non-cursed potions of extra healing
• a wand of sleep (4-8 charges)
• a wand of healing
• an uncursed stethoscope
• an uncursed medical kit with 1-60 items, each with an equal chance of being a pill, bandage, or phial
• an uncursed oil lamp (¹⁄₅ chance or 20%)
• an uncursed magic marker (¹⁄₅ chance or 20%)
• an uncursed blindfold (¹⁄₅ chance or 20%)

Healers start with additional knowledge of the following items and their appearances:

• Several potions
  • The potion of sickness
  • The potion of blindness
  • The potion of hallucination
  • The potion of restore ability
  • The potion of full healing
• the healthstone

The Healer's default starting pet is a little dog or kitten with equal probability.

Intrinsics

Healers gain the following intrinsic properties upon reaching the given experience levels:

• Level 1: poison resistance
• Level 15: warning

Attributes

The Healers's starting attributes are distributed as follows:

Attributes	Strength	Dexterity	Constitution	Intelligence	Wisdom	Charisma	Remaining
Minimum attributes	7	7	11	7	13	16	14
Distribution percentages	15%	15%	25%	20%	20%	5%
Mean w/ standard deviation	18/01.61±2.48	13.19±2.16	16.43±1.76	8.90±1.40	9.21±1.49	7.90±1.40

Skills

Healers have the following skills available to them:

Healer skills
Max	Skills
Basic	Weapons: scimitar, saber, mace, polearms, spear, javelin, trident Combat: riding, bare hands Spells: attack, divination, enchantment, protection, body, matter
Skilled	Weapons: dagger, short sword, club, paddle, sling, shuriken
Expert	Weapons: knife, quarterstaff, dart, unicorn horn Spells: healing

Healers start with Basic skill in knives and healing spells. They use the wisdom stat to cast spells, and their special spell is cure sickness.

Techniques

Healers can learn the disarm technique by reaching Skilled in any weapon, and also gain the following techniques at the listed experience levels:

Level	Technique
1	Surgery
20	Revive

Special rules

Healers get a +1 alignment record bonus for healing pets.

Healers only take ¹⁄₂ damage from breaking wands by applying them.

Healers do not suffer damage or attribute loss from quaffing a potion of sickness, though doing so will still cure hallucination.

Nurses will not damage Healers with their attacks.

A Healer can more reliably apply a stethoscope to themselves while engulfed by a whirly monster.

Healers can reliably apply medical kits to consume pills, and always gain their beneficial effects.

Rank titles

The status line displays one of the following ranks for the corresponding experience levels:

• XL 1-2: Rhizotomist
• XL 3-5: Empiric
• XL 6-9: Embalmer
• XL 10-13: Dresser
• XL 14-17: Medicus ossium/Medica ossium
• XL 18-21: Herbalist
• XL 22-25: Magister/Magistra
• XL 26-29: Physician
• XL 30: Chirurgeon

Gods

The Healer pantheon is based on the mythology of ancient Greece. Their first sacrifice gift is Mirrorbright, an artifact shield of reflection.

• Lawful: Athena
• Neutral: Hermes
• Chaotic: Poseidon

Quest

The Healer's quest sees them fighting the Cyclops for The Staff of Aesculapius, an artifact quarterstaff. It grants hungerless regeneration while wielded, and deals double damage to all monsters without drain resistance and drains levels from them on each hit - this life-draining applies a further +1d8 damage to the target's current and maximum HP, and restores half of that damage to the wielder's current HP. Invoking The Staff of Aesculapius heals the user by half of the HP needed to return to full health, and cures sickness, blindness not caused by gunk (e.g. from a cream pie) and sliming.

Strategy

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Compared to their NetHack counterparts, Healers start with even more healing resources, are capable of achieving skill in all schools of magic (though they are limited to Basic), and can easily obtain reflection by sacrificing for Mirrorbright. They are also all the more likely to struggle for viable forms of offense: despite access to more spell schools, Healers cannot reliably focus on offensive spellcasting in the notably more dangerous early game of SLASH'EM, and their first gift Mirrorbright will also make obtaining subsequent artifacts (particularly weapons) more difficult. The zombification of the Gnomish Mines also makes protection racket attempts considerably more difficult for gnomish Healers.

Early game

A Healer may opt to lean more on their healing spells and the starting wand of healing for dire situations in the early game, saving as many of their potions for alchemy as possible - the healing resources available that do not rely on their spellcasting mean that Healers can elect to wear a mithril-coat much sooner (e.g. around experience level 4) and improve their AC significantly, since all body armor incurs spellcasting penalties except for robes of any type. The wand of sleep remains a powerful tool for difficult encounters, though Healers should be careful not to hit themselves with a reflected ray; non-elven Healers can obtain sleep resistance from the corpses of larvae, which can be safely eaten due to their starting poison resistance.

In terms of weapons, scimitars from early orcs are somewhat viable, and unicorn horns remain stellar long-term options: Healers can train them to Expert, and the horn's enchantment in SLASH'EM determines its ability to heal negative status properties reliably. For artifact weapons, while the neutral and unaligned selection of SLASH'EM artifacts are more than sufficient on paper, they run into the aforementioned issue of Mirrorbright lowering artifact odds - furthermore, many of the highest-damage artifact weapons in their skill set are cross-aligned, such as the clubs Bat from Hell and Skullcrusher; using an artifact wish for one requires the Healer to have at least 41 HP, which is thankfully less difficult than it appears due to their HP growth. A Healer not concerned about prayer timeout or else struggling to find an artifact weapon can try crowning for Vorpal Blade, which is a somewhat more effective weapon with its increased ¹⁄₁₀ chance (10%) of beheading. Another wish candidate for players not concerned about artifacts is the crysknife, which makes use of the Healer's ability to reach Expert in knives and has its base damage increased to 1d20/1d30, making it an even more stellar option compared to NetHack.

Healers not averse to exploiting a bug can often get a wish by burying medical kits, including their starting kit: this requires little more than a pick-axe, a boulder, and some time.

Mid-game

Many Healers will eventually commit to one of average fighter builds or average casting builds, with the choice largely depending on inventory and preferences as normal - though they lack the most valuable perks of each play style (i.e. two weapon combat and lack of spell schools that can be trained to Skilled), they can still be more than capable enough with either to successfully ascend. A Healer's surgery technique is not especially useful beyond the early stages, with a well-enchanted unicorn horn covering most status ailments, and will be further superseded once they can reliably use alchemy to amass potions of full healing.

The Healer's quest is overall more perilous than in NetHack. The Staff of Aesculapius no longer grants drain resistance of its own, and this leaves the Cyclops somewhat more vulnerable—conversely, the dragons that can generate at level creation are much more tanky and damaging threats, and the snakes generated at the same time can include dangeorus asphynxes. Furthermore, the Cyclops himself can still inflict major melee damage even without the ability to drain the hero. Fortunately, sources of drain resistance are more accessible due to the increased amount of level draining threats that SLASH'EM introduces; additionally, a Healer that is able to successfully best a dragon even on the quest's home level can obtain dragon scale mail and improve their survival odds drastically, as well as their casting ability (though not to the extent of NetHack).

Late game

For melee-focused characters, Mirrorbright will generally be well-established in the shield slot at this point, which among other things leaves the amulet slot open for choices such as drain resistance, life saving, or flying. The revive technique is unlikely to come up at all for any Healer, assuming they gain the experience levels necessary to learn it: the wand of undead turning is usually sufficient for most pet revival purposes, and the stone to flesh spell should typically be available for pets subjected to stoning.

The Staff of Aesculapius may be a possible late-game weapon candidate for spellcasting-focused builds: though it lacks drain resistance and The Hand of Vecna provides hungerless regeneration without using up a slot, it is still a good offensive weapon against high-level hostile monsters that lack drain resistance, up to and including Planetars and Solars, and Gehennom is much shorter in SLASH'EM. Remember that the #tip extended command does not exist in SLASH'EM, so be sure to have some means of curse removal prepared in your inventory. Spell-focused Healers that opt not to wield The Staff as their main weapon can make use of any well-enchanted one-handed artifact weapon and a small shield.